On May 10th 2008, another wonderful letter from Birmingham’s Jeane Goforth,MMW––MiracleMusicWorker…or MusicMiracleWorker…either way it’s MMW.
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Jaime,
I wish skeptics of the power of Jose Abreu’s vision could spend a Friday afternoon with us at Cave9. It is so intense, so powerful that I don’t ever have the words.
The doors opened and we were inundated with children from the housing project. That alone is a minor miracle. I can remember staring out the door of Cave9 for the first few weeks wondering how to overcome their suspicion. There are so many children coming at once that we have had to implement some rules–no balls inside, drum pads and sticks outside, and good behavior while waiting for lessons. The real secret will be more teachers, which we are working on. Like all children, their patience does not match their attention span.
There is one young man who is a nightmare. He is everywhere, hands on everything, with unbounded curiosity and an attention span measured in nanoseconds. He had to be physically extracted from lessons as he grabbed at bows and strummed guitars held by other hands. Yet he gave me a hug and called me “mom” before rushing out the door to pursue his next thought.
Matthew from Hill Elementary came with a family friend so that he could have lessons on more of the instruments he is interested in–which, so far, is every instrument he’s encountered. Amazingly, he’s got a gift for them all. The friend sat shaking her head at the apparent chaos, but I soon turned to find her helping Ashari and Angelica–whom she’d never met–work through the packets of music worksheets they’d found in my box. Matthew is a bit shy, but when he discovered our flute, he did not hesitate to go upstairs and ask the piccolo player (who was in a piano lesson) how to make it work. He did cello, piano, guitar, and trumpet lessons. He dabbled with the flute, clarinet, and drums. He made fast friends with Ashari, Angelica and the others taking multiple lessons. To him, Cave9 is a candy store and he has a fortune to spend.
The last two times that Shaina has come with her family, she has sat in a corner doing homework. An eighth grader, she wasn’t interested in music lessons until her mom suggested she bring her piccolo. While her mom took a voice lesson, Shaina climbed up on stage to sit with her brother Thurston (sax) and Matthew (trumpet). In five minutes, she was drawn in. By the time her mother was begging her to PLEASE pack up, she was grinning broadly over Nick’s invitation to play in our youth orchestra, wanting to know when, where, how soon she could join.
A young lady arrived with a violin slung over her shoulder and trailing her friend who plays cello. They both play in their high school orchestra nearby, which we were not even aware existed and will be investigating so that we can collaborate. My daughter Molly was so impressed with these two students. She said that they hung on every word she uttered, eager to improve their skills. Molly said that she can help the violinist some, but that this young lady will soon need a dedicated violin teacher. Of course, Molly is excited about how much she can teach the cellist. She begged them to come back today.
I wandered upstairs at one point to look for more drum pads. Lauren had three people playing chords on the keyboards while she sang “Amazing Grace”. All four faces were glowing. Amazing grace, indeed.
Harry was outside teaching drums on the sidewalk. He started with pads and sticks, but children kept coming inside to ask for one more piece of the drum kit. Then one came in to ask for ear plugs, so I went to check on the class. As I rounded the corner, a student did a loud roll on the snare. Harry gave me a grin as a police car cruised slowly by. A fashionable twenty-something in leathers and carrying a helmet was looking on bemusedly. He had stopped for directions but was fascinated by the scene on the sidewalk. Picture it: five inner city children still in their school uniforms, a tall blond college freshman whose favorite word is ‘dude’, a drum set, and far too many drum sticks scattered alongside the graffiti-covered wall of a rock club in downtown Birmingham. A white board leans against the lamp post with a diagram of today’s lesson and everyone is intent on mastering this rudiment–playing as loudly as possible while rush hour traffic rolls past.
Jaime, that’s not even all that happened in just three hours. I feel I am packing more meaning into each day of my life now than in all the near-half-century that has gone before. When I go around to the teachers to tell them it’s time to stop, they look at me with shock. “It’s 6:00 already?” We invite and encourage any and everyone to experience this, to come check it out, to get involved. Molly’s already making plans to take this back to Louisville when she goes in the fall. She says she may be doing it alone, but that this idea has got to be shared, got to be spread everywhere.
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